Feb 5, 2011

Barbara Russ of Im Nahtschatten

Today, I would like to introduce to you Barbara, a friend of mine, who runs Im Nahtschatten [Sink-Stitch] - a fashion blog quite different from the rest!

Follow the jump below for an interesting and extensive interview on Barbara's professional experience as a fashion blogger, her thoughts on paid content, and how an image of Walt Disney's Little Mermaid would bestow upon her blog more readers in a day than any ordinary month...

What's your name, how old are you, and what do you do for a living (or all day, for that matter)?

My name is Barbara Russ, I am 26 years old and a student at Freie Universität Berlin. Most days I am busy with uni work and blogging. Fortunately, I enjoy my major and also feeding my blog with new posts. My remaining time is divided up equally between books on fashion theory, movies, my boyfriend and flat mates. Every now and then, there are also parties, fashion weeks, exhibitions and so forth.

How long have you been blogging? How did you get around to blogging?

I've been blogging since April 2009, so not very long. I started right after I moved to Berlin. First I was writing for Fashionfreax about fashion and lifestyle, then I started taking on other jobs: Writing on culture and happenings for Globe-m.de and also for Modabot. I still work for the latter two, Fashionfreax has been on the rocks for a while, as there just isn't enough time.

What's your blog called and why?

My blog is called „Im Nahtschatten“ ['Sink-Stitch' or literally 'The Shadow of the Seam']. There are two reasons I called it that: Firstly, when I was still a student at German design school Esmod, we were always joking about how fashion designers were living in 'the shadow of the seam', because we had hardly any free time and were constantly sewing. Secondly, the name transports my critical view on fashion, its industry, the business, its practices and relevant topics.

What are you blogging about? Why?

I probably just answered the first question above, so here's the Why bit: I blog because I like the idea of introducing to other people a new point of view, one that I am personally interested in and that hasn't really been around yet. I would like my readers to change their attitude towards the fashion industry: Some a perhaps a little less disdainful, others maybe a little less naive.

In the beginning, I was planning on using my blog for high-level bitching, like a German "Go Fug Yourself" - people used to tell me I was good at that. However, I discovered that that was very difficult to do on the spot, also I'm much better at it when just talking. Overall, I'm better at factual critique, I guess.

Who's your target audience?

I have no target audience. Everyone who's interested is very welcome to stop by. My ideal target audience, in any case, is one that comments a lot. So far, I've only been getting very little feedback on my blog. It's probably too new still.

Who designed your blog? How much was that? In case you designed your own layout: Where did you learn how to?

I used a Wordpress template. I learned to use Wordpress during my time with the Fashionfreax, just like stuff about optimization for Google, tagging, and some other stuff. Other things, for example how to come up with categories or how to embed buttons and icons in the side bar, I googled or found out through trial and error. My blog's profile picture was put together with Photoshop. I was lucky enough to learn how to do that at design school.

Which software and which host do you use? Can you recommend them?

Like I said, Wordpress. So far I can't compare this to anything else. But I guess your own website and host and so forth is only recommendable to people who REALLY know what they are doing. For beginners, Wordpress or Blogspot should suffice.

What role play photos, MP3-files or video clips on your blog? If you use them, would you mind showing us one?

Photos play a big role. Issue-wise, my blog is dealing a lot with visuals, too. Plus I believe that most readers get tired of too much text. I only read a lot of text when I am dying to know something. Under other circumstances, I don't have enough time for that. So yes, I like using photos and videos to get my point across very much.

How many readers do you have? How many would you like to have? Does their number matter to you at all?

On average around 1500 a month. Frankly speaking, I'd love to have more. Or at least more active ones. I enjoy feedback of any kind. Ultimately, I am writing my blog for myself though, to clear my mind of thoughts I have. I like that. And if other people dedicate their time to me by reading my posts, that's absolutely awesome, no matter how many of them.

There was a funny incident with regard to reader numbers last November, though. On the 16th, an ordinary day, my reader numbers suddenly exploded. I only noticed on the 17th, when I saw that my statistics were different: Instead of 150, 1500 was the new maximum. My first thought was that somebody had linked to me. But when I had triple the usual number of visitors the next day again, I realised that all of them were coming via an article on Arielle, I understood what had happened: Facebook and its comic characters were the reason. My image of Arielle was pretty high up in Google's image search, so people stopped by to get it from my blog.

Can you learn how to blog? Do you need to know a lot about computers? Do you have any advice for beginners?

The question is: Can you learn how to write and do you have something to say? If you can answer both questions with yes, you shouldn't shy away from blogging because of technical issues. They usually are explained rather quickly. Watching You-Tube tutorials or googling specific questions always helps.

Have you made negative experiences with blogging, too? What kind?

It eats up my time! Other than that, no, on the contrary: It opened up a bunch of interesting possibilities and enjoy it a lot. It makes me happy that through blogging I get to watch fashion shows and invitiations to parties. I've met great people, not just fashionistas, and I'm becoming more experienced in journalism.

And have you ever made money through your blog? If yes, how so?

Not through my own blog, but through the other ones. I applied regularly with Globe-m by answering one of their jobs ads and now receive a fee per published article. I like it that I don't only get to write about fashion there, but also about arts and culture. For Modabot, too, I work fee-based. I love working there as the atmosphere's great and their fashion-related topics are hot. At Fashinfreax, there was the odd cooperation, but these were mostly goods or vouchers to distribute among our readers instead of money for us bloggers. As long as topic-wise, the ads match a blog's content, I don't see any problems with ads. But as my own blog is rather critical in nature, I doubt that it's very suitable for ads or other paid content.

Do you use twitter, too? Why (not)? What pros and cons do you see when it comes to twitter?

I installed an automatic feed for my posts, and I have a few followers. I hardly use it, though. Maybe more now that I've got an iPhone. We'll see.

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